firecrawl-build-search

---
name: firecrawl-build-search
description: Integrate Firecrawl `/search` into product code and agent workflows. Use when an app needs discovery before extraction, when the feature starts with a query instead of a URL, or when the system should search the web and optionally hydrate result content.
license: ISC
metadata:
  author: firecrawl
  version: "0.1.0"
  homepage: https://www.firecrawl.dev
  source: https://github.com/firecrawl/skills
inputs:
  - name: FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
    description: Firecrawl API key for hosted Firecrawl requests.
    required: true
  - name: FIRECRAWL_API_URL
    description: Optional base URL for self-hosted Firecrawl deployments.
    required: false
---

# Firecrawl Build Search

Use this when the application starts with a query, not a URL.

## Use This When

- the user asks a question and the product must discover sources first
- the feature needs current web results
- you want to turn a search query into a shortlist of pages for later scraping

## Default Recommendations

- Use `/search` first when URL discovery is part of the product behavior.
- Keep search and extraction conceptually separate unless scraping search results is clearly required.
- Prefer selective follow-up extraction over broad hydration when cost or latency matters.

## Common Product Patterns

- answer generation with cited sources
- company, competitor, or topic discovery
- research workflows that produce a shortlist of **web pages** before deeper extraction
- query-to-URL pipelines for later `/scrape` or `/interact`

Note that "research workflow" here means discovering web pages. If the product is
searching **published papers**, that is a different surface — see the escalation
rules below.

## Escalation Rules

- If you already have the URL, use [firecrawl-build-scrape](../firecrawl-build-scrape/SKILL.md).
- If the result page then requires clicks or form interaction, escalate to [firecrawl-build-interact](../firecrawl-build-interact/SKILL.md).
- If the feature searches **published research papers** — biomedical, clinical, and life-science literature (PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv) or arXiv preprints — `/search` is the wrong surface. Use the research paper index instead: [firecrawl-research-index](../firecrawl-research-index/SKILL.md). Passing `categories: ["research"]` to `/search` does **not** query that index; it filters an ordinary web search to research-affiliated websites (the list includes PubMed, bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and publisher sites) and returns page results from them — no abstract search, related-paper expansion, or full-text passages.
- If the feature answers developer questions from issues, pull requests, READMEs, or documentation pages, use the developer index instead: [firecrawl-developer-index](../firecrawl-developer-index/SKILL.md). The same caveat applies to `categories: ["developer"]`.

## Implementation Notes

- Treat `/search` as discovery, ranking, and source selection.
- Be explicit about whether the product needs snippets, URLs, or full result content.
- Keep the query contract stable so downstream scraping logic stays predictable.

## Docs (Source of Truth)

Read the source-of-truth page for your project language before writing integration code:

- **Node / TypeScript**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/node](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/node)
- **Python**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/python)
- **Rust**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/rust)
- **Java**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/java)
- **Elixir**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/elixir)
- **cURL / REST**: [docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/curl](https://docs.firecrawl.dev/agent-source-of-truth/curl)

## See Also

- [firecrawl-build](../firecrawl-build/SKILL.md)
- [firecrawl-build-scrape](../firecrawl-build-scrape/SKILL.md)
- [firecrawl-build-interact](../firecrawl-build-interact/SKILL.md)
- [firecrawl-research-index](../firecrawl-research-index/SKILL.md)
- [firecrawl-developer-index](../firecrawl-developer-index/SKILL.md)